CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE YOUTH OF COLUMBA, AND HIS MONASTIC LIFE IN IRELAND. The biographers of Columba. — His different names. — His royal origin. — The supreme kings of Ireland : the O'Neills and O'Donnells; Red Hugh. — Birth of Columba ; vision of his mother. — His monastic education; jealousy of his comrades; Kieran; the two Finnians; the school of Clonard. — Vision of the guardian angel and the three brides. — The assassin of a virgin struck by death at the prayer of Columba. — His youthful influence in Ireland; his monastic foundations, especially at Durrow and at Deny ; his song in honour of Deny. — His love for poetry; his connection with the travelling bards. — He was himself a poet, a great traveller, and of a quarrelsome disposition. — His passion for manuscripts. — Longarad of the hairy legs and his bag of books. — Dispute about the Psalter of Fhmian; judgment of King Diarmid, founder of Clonmacnoise. — Protest of Columba; he takes to flight, chanting the Hymn of Confidence and raises a civil war. — Battle of Cul-Dreimhne; the Cathae or Psalter of battle. — Synod of Teltown; Columba is excommunicated. — St. Brendan takes part with Columba, who consults several hermits, and among others Abban, in the Cell of Tears. — The last of his advisers, Molaise, condemns him to exile. — Twelve of his disciples follow him; devotion of the young Mochonna. — Contradictory reports concerning the first forty years of his life, 1 CHAPTER II. COLUMBA AN EMIGRANT IN CALEDONIA — THE HOLY ISLE OF IONA. Aspect of the Hebridean archipelago. — Columba first lands at Oronsay, but leaves it because Ireland is visible from its shores. — Description of Iona. — First buildings of the new monastery. — What remains of it. — Enthusiasm of Johnson on landing there in the eighteenth century. — Columba bitterly regrets his country. — Passionate elegies on the pains of exile. — Note upon the poem of Alius. — Proofs in his biography of the continuance of that patriotic regret. — The stork comes from Ireland to Iona, 31 CHAPTER III. THE APOSTOLATE OF COLUMBA AMONG THE SCOTS AND PICTS. Moral transformation of Columba. — His progress in spiritual life. — His humility. — His charity. — His preaching by tears. — The hut which formed his abbatial palace at Iona. — His prayers ; his work of transcription. — His crowd of visitors. — His severity in the examination of monastic vocations. — Aldus the Black, the murderer of Columba's enemy King Diarmid, rejected by the community. — Penance of Libran of the Rushes. — Columba encourages the despairing and unmasks the hypocrites. — Monastic propaganda of Iona ; Columba's fifty-three foundations in Scotland. — His relations with the people of Caledonia : First with the colony of Dalriadians from Ireland, whose king was his relative ; he enlightens and confirms their imperfect Christianity. — Ambushes laid for his chastity. — His connection with the Picts, who occupied the north of Britain. — The dorsum Britannia. — Columba their first missionary. — The fortress gates of their king Brudus open before him. — He struggles with the Druids in their last refuge. — He preaches by an interpreter. — His respect for natural virtue. — Baptism of two old Pictish chiefs. — Columba's humanity : he redeems an Irish captive. — Frequent journeys among the Picts, whose conversion he accomplishes before he dies. — His fellow-workers, Malruve and Drostan ; the Monastery of Tears, 43 CHAPTER IV. COLUMBA CONSECRATES THE KING OF THE SCOTS. — HE GOES TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF IRELAND, DEFENDS THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE HIBERNIO-SCOTIC COLONY, AND SAVES THE CORPORATION OF BARDS. Passionate solicitude of Columba for his relatives and countrymen. — He protects King Aidan in his struggle with the Anglo-Saxons of Northumbria. — The same king is crowned by Columba at Iona ; the first example of a Christian consecration of kings. — The Stone of Destiny: The descendants of Aidan. — Synod or Parliament of Drumceitt in Ireland. — Aedh, king of Ireland, and Aidan, king of the Irish colonists in Scotland. — The independence of the new Scottish kingdom is recognised through the influence of Columba. — He interposes in favour of the bards, whom the king had proposed to outlaw. — Power and excesses of that corporation. — By means of Columba, the good grain is not burned with the weeds. — The bards' song of gratitude in honour of their saviour. — Columba, reproved by his disciple, desires that this song should not be repeated during his life. — Superstitious regard attached to it after his death. — Intimate union between music, poetry, and religion in Ireland. — The bards, transformed into minstrels, are the first champions of national independence and Catholic faith against the English conquest. — Fiercely assailed, they yet continue to exist up to our own day. — Moore's Irish Melodies, — The Celtic muse at the service of the vanquished in the Highlands of Scotland as in Ireland, 68 CHAPTER V. COLUMBA'S RELATIONS WITH IRELAND—CONTINUED, Cordial intercourse of Columba with the Irish princes. — Prophecy upon the future of their sons. — Domnall, the king's son, obtains the privilege of dying in his bed. — Columba visits the Irish monasteries. — Popular enthusiasm. — Vocation of the young idiot afterwards known as St. Ernan. — Solicitude of Columba for the distant monasteries and monks. — He protects them from excessive labours and accidents. — He exercises authority over laymen. — Baithen, his cousin-german and principal assistant. — The respect shown to both in an assembly of learned men, 87 CHAPTER VI. COLUMBA, THE PROTECTOR OF SAILORS AND AGRICULTURISTS, THE FRIEND OF LAYMEN, AND THE AVENGER OF THE OPPRESSED. His universal solicitude and charity during all his missionary life. — The sailor-monks : seventy monks of Iona form the crew of the monastic fleet ; their boats made of osiers covered with hides. — Their boldness at sea : the whirlpool of Corryvreckan. — Columba's prayer protects them against sea-monsters. — Their love of solitude leads them into unknown seas, where they discover St. Kilda, Iceland, and the Faroe Isles. — Cormac in Orkney, and in the icy ocean. — Columba often accompanies them : his voyages among the Hebrides. — The wild boar of Skye. — He subdues tempests by his prayer : he invokes his friend St. Kenneth. — He is himself invoked during life, and after his death, as the arbiter of winds. — Filial complaints of the monks when their prayers are not granted. — The benefits which he conferred on the agricultural population disentangled from the maze of fables : Columba discovers fountains, regulates irrigations and fisheries, shows how to graft fruit-trees, obtains early harvests, interferes to stop epidemics, cures diseases, and procures tools for the peasants. — His special solicitude for the monkish labourers : he blesses the milk when it is brought from the cow : his breath refreshes them on their return from harvest. — The blacksmith carried to heaven by his alms. — His relations with the layman whose hospitality he claims : prophecy touching the rich miser who shuts his door upon him. — The five cows of his Lochaber host. — The poacher's spear. — He pacifies and consoles all whom he meets. — His prophetic threats against the felons and rievers. — Punishment inflicted upon the assassin of an exile. — Brigands of royal blood put down by Columba at the risk of his life. — He enters into the sea up to his knees to arrest the pirate who had pillaged his friend. — The standard-bearer of Caesar and the old missionary, 96 CHAPTER VII. COLUMBA'S LAST YEARS — HIS DEATH — HIS CHARACTER. Columba the confidant of the joys and consoler of the sorrows of domestic life. — He blesses little Hector with the fair locks. — He prays for a woman in her delivery; he reconciles the wife of a pilot to her husband. — Vision of the saved wife who receives her husband in heaven. — He continues his missions to the end of his life. — Visions before death. — The Angels' Hill. — Increase of austerities. — Nettle-soup his sole food. — A supernatural light surrounds him during his nightly work and prayers. — His death is retarded for four years by the prayers of the community. — When this respite has expired, he takes leave of the monks at their work ; he visits and blesses the granaries of the monastery. — He announces his death to his attendant Diarmid. — His farewell to his old white horse. — Last benediction to the isle of Iona ; last work of transcription ; last message to his community. — He dies in the church. — Review of his life and character, 122 CHAPTER VIII. SPIRITUAL DESCENDANTS OF ST. COLUMBA. His posthumous glory : miraculous visions on the night of his death : rapid extension of his worship. — His solitary funeral and tomb at Iona. — His translation to Ireland, where he rests between St. Patrick and St. Bridget. — He is, like Bridget, feared by the Anglo-Norman conquerors. — John de Courcy and Richard Strongbow. — The Vengeance of Columba. — Supremacy of Iona over the Celtic churches of Caledonia and the north of Ireland. — Singular privilege and primacy of the abbot of Iona in respect to bishops. — The ecclesiastical organisation of Celtic countries exclusively monastic. — Moderation and respect of Columba for the episcopal rank. — He left behind him no special rule. — That which he followed differed in no respect from the usual customs of the monastic order, which proves the exact observance of all the precepts of the Church, and the chimerical nature of all speculations upon the primitive Protestantism of the Celtic Church. — But lie founded an order, which lasted several centuries under the title of the Family of Columb-kill. — The clan and family spirit was the governing principle of Scottish monasticism. — Baithen and the eleven first successors of Columba at Iona were all members of the same race. — The two lines, lay and ecclesiastical, of the great founders. — The headquarters of the order transferred from Iona to Kells, one of Columba's foundations in Ireland. — The Coarbs. — Posthumous influence of Columba upon the Church of Ireland. — Lex Columcille. — Monastic Ireland in the seventh century the principal centre of Christian knowledge and piety. — Each monastery a school. — The transcription of manuscripts, which had been one of Columba's favourite occupations, continued and extended by his family even upon the continent. — Historic annals. — The Festiloge of Angus the Culdee. — The Culdees. — Propagation of Irish monasticism abroad. — Irish saints and monasteries in France, Germany, and Italy. — The Irish saint Cathal venerated in Calabria under the name of San Cataldo. — Monastic university of Lismore : crowd of foreign students, especially of Anglo-Saxons, in Irish monasteries. — Confusion of temporal affairs in Ireland. — Civil wars and massacres. — Notes upon king-monks. — Patriotic intervention of the monks. — Adamnan, biographer and ninth successor of Columba, and his Law of the Innocents. — They are driven from their cloisters by the English. — Influence of Columba in Scotland. — Traces of the ancient Caledonian Church in the Hebrides. — Apostolical mission of Kentigern in the country between the Clyde and the Mersey. — His meeting with Columba. — His connection with the king and queen of Strathclyde. — Legend of the queen's ring. — Neither Columba nor Kentigern acted upon the Anglo-Saxons, who continued pagans, and maintained a threatening attitude. —The last bishops of conquered Britain desert their churches, 138 Digitized by Google.

Mode of access: Internet

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews